Documentary Expression and Thirties America

"A comprehensive inquiry into the attitudes and ambitions that characterized the documentary impulse of the thirties. The subject is a large one, for it embraces (among much else) radical journalism, academic sociology, the esthetics of photography, Government relief programs, radio broadcasting, the literature of social work, the rhetoric of political persuasion, and the effect of all these on the traditional arts of literature, painting, theater and dance. The great merit of Mr. Stott’s study lies precisely in its wide-ranging view of this complex terrain."—Hilton Kramer, New York Times Book Review

"[Scott] might be called the Aristotle of documentary. No one before him has so comprehensively surveyed the achievement of the 1930s, suggesting what should be admired, what condemned, and why; no one else has so persuasively furnished an aesthetic for judging the form."—Times Literary Supplement

Part One: Documentary 1. What Is Documentary? Documentary: The Primacy of Feeling The Two Documents and How They Work 2. Social Documentary 3. The Two Persuasions Direct Vicarious 4. What Documentary Treats Part Two: The Documentary Motive and the Thirties5. The Central Media 6. The New Deal FDR WPA 7. A Documentary Imagination Part Three: The Documentary Nonfiction of the Thirties8. Popularized Case-Worker Studies 9. Social Science Writing Case Study Participant Observation 10. Documentary Reportage: Radical Exposé Quotation Case Study Participant Observer 11. Informant Narrative 12. The Documentary Book 13. Documentary Reportage: "Conservative" Part Four: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men14. The Photographs 15. The Text Afterword, 1986 Notes Bibliography Index

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